She comes closer, heat rolling off her skin, the faint coconut of her shampoo cutting through lemon and salt. “You don’t make that call. This is Sienna’s party. Her idea. Her joy. I said yes.”
“Not in that,” I nod toward the costume, “and not in front of?—”
“In front of who?” Her chin tips up. “Adults? Men who can handle a woman on a stage without combusting?”
“Parker,” I start, and she slices a hand through the air.
“No. You don’t get to do this anymore. You don’t get to say it’s about protection and make it law.” Her voice doesn’t shake; it shivers with held-back years. “I’m not part of your organization! I’ve done just fine without you three skulking around, scaring off every potential of me having a life. I am not your problem to manage.”
She was never a problem to manage, though. We were the sons, Dominic Carter’s lieutenants. We were born into this life just like Charles. She was just a bonus. Aside from the standard bro code that most boys and men follow, Parker has always been off-limits. Not just because she’s a criminal empire princess, but because she’s our best friend’s sister.
Aside from that, women born into our world don’t hold the same titles or responsibilities as men. They married, they birthed children, raised them, rinse and repeat. It made Parker, as independent as she’s always been, more of an asset. Potentialleverage or possible bridge into aligning outside families to the Carter name.
Charles swears he’ll change that when he takes over, but I don’t think Parker will ever want anything to do with the business, no matter how modern he makes everything.
Silas’s mouth flattens. “You say that like we woke up one day and decided the rules for fun.”
“You enforced them for fun,” she shoots back. “Every party, one of you at my shoulder. Every boy who looked at me twice was gone by morning. ‘For my own good.’ You didn’t keep me safe. You kept me small.”
“We kept you breathing,” I say, and it comes out rougher than I intend. “Your father would’ve married you off at eighteen if your mother hadn’t set the divorce in motion and put you on a plane. You think that was a fairy tale? Men lined up with rings and alliances attached. You were a chess piece long before you were ever a girl in a white skirt at our dock.”
Her expression flickers, then hardens. “And you decided I’d stay a piece even after she got me out. Great. Thank you for the recap.”
Cal’s voice threads in, softer, coaxing. “You went to USC, built a life, got your degrees, carved out a world where Dominic didn’t decide your morning. That was the point. We didn’t touch it. We let you run.”
“You didn’tletme do anything.” She turns on him. “I ran because I had to. Because staying meant living under every pair of eyes in this room. You three weren’t my friends. You were my wardens with smiles.”
Silas laughs then, a short, broken sound that isn’t humor. “We were Charles’s friends, sure. Sons of your father’s men. We took the same oath you hate. We took it because not taking it gets people killed.” He steps closer, voice low. “You left for six years, Parker. Six years and not a word.”
“You would have stopped me.” She swallows. “You always stop me.”
“Because we cared,” he says, and it lands like something torn free.
She shakes her head. “No. Because you were ordered to keep me in line.”
It’s not true, not like that, and it’s not false, not entirely. The line between protection and power is razor-thin in our world, and we walked it with our jaws clenched and our hands empty. I think of Charles at Duke, learning how to inherit without bleeding. I think of Parker in Los Angeles, learning who she is without the Carter name cutting a notch in every doorframe. We stayed. She left. The oath held.
Cal’s smile is gone now. “You were more than Charles’s sister, angel,” he says, and for once, there’s no play in it. “More than our responsibility.”
Color rises along her throat. “Don’t.”
She has no idea how much each of us wanted her.
How much we want her, even now.
The suite goes quiet enough to hear the gulls outside. Parker’s breath hitches, anger, and something else moving through her face like weather. She looks down, and the red-black costume is still in Silas’s hand, the glitter catching on a thread of sun.
“If you go out there in that,” I say, steadier, “It won’t be about Sienna’s joy. It’ll be about Carter’s daughter on a stage, and every man with a grudge will have a new angle. You want agency? Keep it. But protect yourself at the same time.”
“So I should hide?” she asks quietly. “Because men can’t be trusted to behave.”
“No,” Cal says, coming off the window at last. “You should pick your battlefield.”
Silas holds the costume out, palm open. “Dance,” he says, not smiling now. “But do it where we control the room. Do it for us.”
Her eyes flash. “I’m sorry?”
I take the costume from Silas and feel the obscene lightness of it slip over my knuckles. I picture the party room full of Charles’s college friends and colleagues. And I picture three chairs on stage in front of her instead of one.
